“Evolution is not just biological!”

Karen Sloan 31/05/2020

Readings - Genesis 11:1-8; Acts 2:1-4; John 14:15-17, 25-27; John 20:19-23

Social media has been a source of connection during our shutdown.  Not only as a way to keep in touch, but to share ideas about what the new norm will be after we open up.

One facebook page I have been following is called, “what do you see from your window”.  It’s a world-wide page, and so many people have posted photos, of backyards, mountains, streams, high-rise buildings, from as far away as Romania, Israel, all sorts of places in America, Canada,  Europe, the UK and Ireland, Africa, and even from Perth, Western Australia, which was me.

Recently someone posted from China, a picture outside their window, looking from one huge block of flats to another. This is what they said…

This is my neighbourhood in Shenzhen, China. Population 13+ million. So many lives in one small space. Some days I look at this and really wish I could swap for your views of the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, Australian Gold Coast sunrises, or the soft Minnesota Northwoods of my childhood. 

But today I look off my balcony and see this as an equally gorgeous vista. For it is a view of humanity. Precious, unique, important lives. All created in the image of God. Needing hope, light, love… especially in these days…. 

I really hope to have eyes of love that see the world from God’s perspective, observing the beauty of His creation even in a neighbourhood like this.

“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 1 John 4:11

Shalom. 

I thought this was a beautiful post. Even with the gender specific tone.

So many responses came back, words of support, encouragement, and connection. If you are wondering where to find God, even in these crazy times, how to love one another in these crazy times, this was one place, both in the post and in the replies..

It made me think about God’s universal presence, not somewhere out there, away from us, but within all creation, as the writer of the post said. We in the West sometimes forget, with our focus on God as father and Jesus as son, that the spirit, God’s spirit, the Holy Spirit if you like, is the oldest expression of the creator at work in creation. It is the spirit which enlivens and empowers life at every level. 

In this sermon I want to take you on a journey about finding God’s spirit in the world, other than facebook.   It will include our Pentecost celebration, but in a way that fits more easily into our modern understanding.  But holding to the core of our faith as well. 

Let us begin by acknowledging that God is part of the story of life. Both the universe story and the story of us. When we think about God being present before Jesus , we can look to the scriptures, to Abraham and Moses,  We can look to the Hebrew people who knew God’s spirit in their land, and in the wind and fire and in the dawn of the world.  Who heard the spirit in the harvest, in the valley of the dry bones, at the giving of the law on Mt Sinai, and in the prophets who spoke for the poor and dispossessed.  God was present and active in the world long before Christianity saw the light of day.

But in the 21stcentury we are asked to look even further back.

What about those who lived centuries before, or before even the dawn of humans. Or even the dawn of animals and birds or even the dawn of the universe.

I confess my undying love for science, for biology and am often amazed and dazzled by the intricate complicated creatures we are. From the DNA molecule, which guides everything from our ability to breathe and think to what hair colour we have, or whether we have earlobes that hang loose or are attached, to the process by which our cells know how to differentiate to become skin or heart or brain tissue.  We are a marvel of life.

But we also come from a long line of marvels. We did not just appear one day, even if that is how the bible would have us believe.  We are the product of millions of years of evolution.  From our most recent ancestors, the Neanderthals, who lived the same time as us, to Homo erectus, and even further back to the Australopithecine species, which predate the Homo species by a few million years, we find evidence of those who have gone before.  They were bipedal like us, but with different features, adapted to the world in which they lived.  I have held models of the skulls of our ancestors in my hands, ones that have been found in Africa and Asia, and have wondered about their thoughts and feelings.  We have found signs of culture and painting, of respect for the dead and some rituals.  God’s spirit residing in this world just as in ours, working for life.

But we can go further back, for we are derived from a common ancestor which we shared with the Chimps and with the Bonobo, some 7 million years ago, or with the Gorilla some 8 or 9 million years ago. These species have evolved separate from us, but we have an ancient link.

And if we go further back, we come to a time when there are no humans, the age of the early primates and mammals. An age of life but not as we know it.  And further back still, to a time of vertebrates and amebas, and single cell organisms and further back to a planet just birthing life, and further back to a universe calling forth galaxies and stars, and further back.  Back to a mystery, a big bang, a calling forth of creation some 14 billion years ago.

This is the greatest story, the wondrous story of life. Not just human life but all of life. And where is God, the spirit of life, the very breath of life in all of this? I believe we find God right in the midst, an energizing creative impulse that has been present since the dawn of the world and the dawn of the universe.  This spirit is not just a fly by nighter, here one day and gone the next, it is at the heart of who we are and who we are to be.  It is found in all of life, from the earliest beginnings in the universe, in the galaxies and stars and planets, and from the smallest life forms to the complex creatures we have evolved into.  

An incredible picture, don’t you think. One that should unite us, for both biologically and spiritually we are one.  We are born from the same stars, born from the same divine life force, born with such commonality it is mind blowing.  Yet we have often lived as though we are not brother and sisters but enemies.  We have hoarded our wealth, controlled our borders, and polluted our land and oceans and air as if we owned it. We have chosen violence over peace and hatred over love, and inequality and exclusion over justice and compassion. 

Even within the church, we have allowed our differences to separate, to divide, with our rules and doctrines, our set beliefs and our certainties, as though we know the mind of God.

How does that happen? It happens when we forget who we belong to, where we have come from and where we are going.

And in this water shed moment, maybe its time to stop, to look and to listen…., even to our traditional stories. Like Pentecost.

So where does Pentecost fit into all of this….

Maybe, as Cynthia Bourgeault suggests, when we look at scripture, we shouldn’t see it as the unchanging revelation of the one true God, but instead an extraordinary sacred archive of the evolution of human consciousness. I love that, because it fits not only with the evolutionary pathway of our species I just talked about but also our own lives in which we move and grow and change. 

So if we look at the readings today in that sense we see an evolution of thought… 

We see that the origins of the festival lie in Judaism, as it celebrated both the completion of the harvest as well as the giving of the law to Moses on Mt Sinai.  As Marcus Borg says it was about the creation of a new kind of community, the way of living together radically different from life in Egypt.

We then hear it in our Christian heritage.

While Luke in Acts tells the story dramatically, like a movie director, the spirit coming as a rushing wind and descending fire, appearing as tongues of flame 50 days after Easter, that told by John is more personal.  The risen Christ bestows the Holy Spirit on his followers on the night of Easter and his spirit is a brooding presence in their hearts and minds. 

The readings from both Luke and John, build on what has gone before, while announcing something altogether new. It was about the creation of a new community in Christ. A community anointed by God’s spirit and in continuity with the life of Jesus.  

Bringing forth peace and justice and reconciliation into the world, here and now...

This reconciliation is seen in Acts. At the Tower of Babel in Genesis, in the reading we also heard today, God scattered the pretentious human race across the earth confusing them by having them speak many languages rather than one.  At Pentecost God reunites the scattered people into a new beloved community, one that is able to bridge differences and value diversity, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female.

The followers of Jesus became this community through the presence of the spirit. They began to share everything they had, former enemies became friends and people laid down their swords and picked up a cross. 

As the book of Acts goes on to say, there was no needy persons among them. The movement had started. A movement which would become the church.

So today we celebrate more than just an event in the past but a starting point to a future for all of us.  A truth hidden in the ancient text. That out of the constraints of power, and tribes and issues about who’s in and who’s out, comes a story about what the spirit brings out of chaos. Unity. Life. Love. An evolving truth that we are called to grasp.

Because Pentecost is not somehow about God’s spirit coming when it wasn’t already present. It has been present since the dawn of time.  What we have at Pentecost is the realization of what that spirit looks like in flesh and blood, in heart and mind, in thought and action.  Jesus brings us closer to the God already present in this world.  He makes us aware that we are part of the story, the grand story, the most beautiful amazing story of life.  And that we have a role to play in continuing the life giving, affirming, creative presence of God in the world. 

We too can bring life and light where there is death and despair. 

We too can see our common bonds rather than our differences which divide. And bridge the gap between us, in all sorts of ways. 

Even as the world around us is changing forever. Even as we are changing and growing. Perhaps some of you might even like to learn how to use facebook! Then you would see what I see.

As the writer of the face book post said about her view from the window –

I look off my balcony and see this as an equally gorgeous vista. For it is a view of humanity. Precious, unique, important lives. All created in the image of God. Needing hope, light, love… especially in these days…. 

“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

I say Shalom to that.